We ask a trivia question each week in our newsletter (subscribe here!). Check out our latest question at the top, and scroll down for past weeks’ trivia.
_____________________________________________________________
True or false?: A tumor can contain hair.
True.
Certain types of germ cell tumors, called teratomas, can contain immature or fully formed tissue, including teeth, hair, bone and muscle.
_____________________________________________________________
How many muscles are contained in the human finger?
Trick question.
Fingers don’t have muscles. Instead, the muscles in our forearms and palms control tendons in our fingers.
_____________________________________________________________
Who has more bones: a baby or an adult (human)?
A baby!
Human babies are born with as many as 300 bones. These fuse into 206 bones in adults.
_____________________________________________________________
How fast does a human sneeze travel?
About 100 mph.
And don’t forget to cover your mouth. A single sneeze can release thousands of tiny respiratory droplets into the air. Some droplets may remain suspended for several minutes and can spread several feet from the source.
_____________________________________________________________
Which mineral is critical for transporting oxygen in the blood?
Iron.
In iron-deficiency anemia, which about 4 million Americans are diagnosed with every year, people experience extreme fatigue and lightheadedness.
_____________________________________________________________
What is the most common blood type in the U.S. and worldwide?
Type O.
Type O is the most common blood type (45% of white people, 51% of Black people, and 57% of Hispanics). And it is often in short supply because it’s in high demand.
_____________________________________________________________
Who was the first woman to earn a medical degree in the United States?
Elizabeth Blackwell, who enrolled in Geneva Medical College, in New York, in 1847.
Every other medical school to which Blackwell applied had rejected her. However, the 150 male medical students at Geneva Medical College unanimously voted to accept her — as a joke. Blackwell attended anyway, and in 1849 she graduated with her medical degree. In 1857, she and her sister Emily Blackwell founded the New York Infirmary for Women and Children. There, she lectured often on the importance of girls’ education. And during the American Civil War a few years later, Blackwell was crucial in organizing nurses, and the Infirmary she’d started began a medical school program to train nurses for the Union efforts.
*Side note: Emily Blackwell followed in her sister’s footsteps and earned her medical degree as well. Yet, the Geneva Medical College and several other schools denied her admission. Rush Medical College in Chicago accepted her in 1852, but after a year of study, male students complained about having a woman in their class, and the Illinois Medical Society pressured to school to revoke Emily Blackwell’s admission. She went on to enroll in the Medical College of Cleveland, Ohio, where she earned her medical degree with honors in 1854.
_____________________________________________________________
What is the most common neurological disorder?
Tension-type headaches and migraines.
Neurological disorders impact more than 1 in 3 people worldwide, according to the World Health Organization. There were about 2.2 billion cases of tension-type headaches worldwide in 2021 and about 1.1 billion cases of migraines.
_____________________________________________________________
Illinois has a moldy state microbe. What is it?
Penicillium rubens strain NRRL 1951.
Why?
Alexander Fleming first observed Penicillium’s antibacterial effects in 1928 in England. But the work leading to large-scale production happened 4,000 miles away in Peoria, Illinois.
A decade after Fleming’s observation, Oxford pathologist Howard Florey and colleagues picked up on Fleming’s work and began testing penicillin in patients in 1941. They gave the first dose to a man with a life-threatening staph infection. The man’s condition improved dramatically, but within a week, the scientists’ penicillin supply ran out. When the infection returned, the patient died.
Florey and his colleagues needed to figure out how to mass produce the antibiotic. With much of Europe under attack during World War II, Florey traveled to the U.S. for help.
He ended up at the Northern Regional Research Laboratory (now called the USDA Agricultural Research Service) in Peoria, Illinois. There, Fleming shared everything he knew about penicillin and how to propagate and maintain a specific population of it. The Peoria scientists got to work, using a technique they’d developed that involved a byproduct of corn starch; it grew the Penicillium better than anything tried yet.
The Peoria scientists tested hundreds of Penicillium strains, and they collected microbes from all sorts of moldy food. But the winner came to the lab in the summer of 1943, from a moldy cantaloupe picked up in the town’s fruit market.
An unidentified housewife, who had heard the lab was searching for moldy foods, dropped it off, wondering if it might be useful. Not only was the moldy cantaloupe useful, but the strain it provided proved crucial in treating service members during World War II.
That original “parent” strain of penicillin still lives in the Peoria lab today.
An award-winning journalist, Katie has written for Chicago Health since 2016 and currently serves as Editor-in-Chief.
